“This news marks a dreadful day for Arsenal Football Club.” This was the opening line from the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust in their statement reacting to Stan Kroenke’s takeover. Uncompromising as that sentiment might be, it seems to reflect the feelings of the majority of Arsenal fans. News of Kroenke’s move to buy out Alisher Usmanov and take complete control of the club has mainly been met with with anger, sadness and a deep sense of pessimism – a mournful groan emanating from Arsenal fans’ collective psyche.

Kroenke’s unpopularity is not just down to the club’s declining fortunes since his original takeover in 2011. With a current net worth of around $8.3bn (£6.4bn) according to Forbes, Arsenal fans initially met the news that he had gained a controlling stake in the club with cautious optimism after several years of biting post-Emirates austerity. If there were some who hoped that Kroenke would augment the club’s finances using his gargantuan personal fortune, they were sorely mistaken. Instead, the man they nicknamed ‘Silent Stan’ for his lack of engagement with supporters seemed happy to let the club drift along as it had before – self-sustainable but, in a landscape increasingly populated by billionaire-subsidised outfits like Chelsea and Manchester City, financially uncompetitive.

So Arsenal have gone from Champions League perennials to Europa League also-rans under his ownership, with their main consolation the three FA Cup triumphs magicked up by Arsene Wenger in his twilight years. While the end of Arsenal’s near decade-long trophy drought in 2014 was a welcome development, the bigger picture under Kroenke has been one of gradual regression.

Not only has he refused to personally subsidise the club like other billionaire owners, he has shown that he has few qualms about taking money out of Arsenal. Back in 2014, Kroenke received a payment of £3m through his company Kroenke Sports and Entertainment (KSE) for “strategic and advisory services” provided to the club. This roughly tallied with a 3 per cent rise in season ticket prices, a fact which only increased the bitter resentment among Arsenal fans over what many saw as an indirect dividend.

‘No checks and balances’

While most Arsenal fans could accept an owner who refused to bankroll the club out of his own pocket – there are many who still feel a certain pride in Arsenal for eschewing the “financial doping”, to borrow a memorable Wengerism, used by rivals like City and Chelsea – the idea of a billionaire siphoning off payments from the club while passing costs on to fans was (and is) understandably abhorrent. Now, with Kroenke about to take 100 per cent control of the club, many worry that 2014 dividend-by-another-name will be a sign of things to come.

In their statement reacting to news of Kroenke’s bid for 100 per cent ownership, the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust have said: “By taking the club private Stan Kroenke will be able to… pay management fees and dividends without any check or balances.” There is also the worry that, with the club entirely in Kroenke’s hands, there will be no requirement for an Annual General Meeting and hence no real scrutiny, transparency or accountability at the club.

Arsenal Supporters’ Trust statement in full:

This news marks a dreadful day for Arsenal Football Club.

Stan Kroenke taking the club private will see the end of supporters owning shares in Arsenal and their role upholding custodianship values.

By taking the club private Stan Kroenke will be able to implement the following detrimental actions:

Pay management fees and dividends without any check or balance

No Annual General Meeting to hold the Board to account

Remove the Independent Directors

Place debt onto Arsenal to support his other business interests

The AST is also extremely concerned to note that this purchase is being funded by a loan.

The most dreadful part of this announcement is the news that Kroenke plans to forcibly purchase the shares held by Arsenal fans. Many of these fans are AST members and hold their shares not for value but as custodians who care for the future of the club. Kroenke’s actions will neuter their voice and involvement. It is in effect legalised theft to remove shareholder scrutiny on how Arsenal is managed.

The AST is wholly against this takeover. Arsenal remains too important to be owned by any one person.

All of this plays into a greater anxiety at Arsenal, namely that the club has forgotten its core values and much of its sense of self since relocating to the Emirates from Highbury. What was once a grand community asset run by the great and the good of north London – not always a sympathetic bunch but at least endowed with a sense of noblesse oblige and a commitment to good governance – is about to become the corporate plaything of an American sports tycoon who has a history of ruthlessly exploiting his assets.

With an ownership portfolio that includes the NBA’s Denver Nuggets, the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche, the Colorado Rapids in MLS and the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL, Kroenke is not so much a sports fan as a collector of sports real estate. Anyone with even a passing interest in the NFL will know that Kroenke was the man who relocated the St Louis Rams to Los Angeles, this despite the vast amounts of taxpayer money which had been ploughed into the Rams’ stadium in St Louis and the enormous fan backlash which followed. Arsenal supporters have followed the Rams’ sorry tale with profound unease, seeing in Kroenke an owner for whom profits are infinitely more important than abstract concepts like ethics, values, loyalty and community.

‘Competing to win the Champions League’

There were intermittent protests against Stan Kroenke during the late Wenger era (Getty Images)

For his part, Kroenke has tried to soothe Arsenal fans’ fears with the heavy-handed PR for which he has become renowned since he took charge of the club. In a statement to the stock exchange regarding his move to buy Usmanov’s shares, Kroenke said: “We at KSE are moving forward with this offer leading to 100 per cent ownership of the club. We appreciate Mr Usmanov’s dedication to the Arsenal Football Club and the storied ethos and history the club represents.”

The KSE statement went on: “KSE believes moving to that model will bring the benefits of a single owner better able to move quickly in furtherance of the club’s strategy and ambitions. KSE is a committed, long-term owner of the club.

“KSE’s ambitions for the club are to see it competing consistently to win the Premier League and the Champions League, as well as the major trophies in the women’s senior game and at youth level.”

While there have been some early signs for hope of a revival under Unai Emery, the idea of Arsenal competing to win the Champions League any time soon is farcical. Fans will see that claim for exactly what it is – an empty statement, a hazy pipe dream, a hefty chunk of pie in the sky. It is reminiscent of a claim made by Ivan Gazidis back in 2013 that Arsenal “should be able to compete at a level like a club such as Bayern Munich,” a comment for which he is now widely ridiculed by supporters. Gazidis has long had his hands on the levers of Arsenal’s clunking PR machine, a job which has made him almost as unpopular as his billionaire proprietor.

For the moment, at least, Kroenke taking complete control at Arsenal should change very little on a day-to-day basis. Usmanov was already effectively shut out of the decision-making process at the club and outright denied a place on the board, leaving him to release the occasional disgruntled statement in the face of the inevitability that Kroenke would eventually win the battle for the club’s ownership.

Arsenal’s share price has rocketed in recent years on the back of the global boom in football finance and – with the hyperinflation of the football economy likely to continue for the foreseeable future – Kroenke’s investment of an extra £600m for Usmanov’s 30 per cent stake will no doubt make him a healthy return. In keeping with Kroenke’s treatment of his American franchises, however, profit-making will be maximised regardless of whether his methods are acceptable to supporters. In an era with less corporate accountability than ever and with an owner who answers to no one, that should leave Arsenal fans extremely concerned.

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